performed a pleasing duty in defending the Democratic party. That party
might well cry out, Save me from my defender. It was a defense of the
party by the arraignment of its prominent members. It was the preservation
of the body by the destruction of its head--for the President of the
United States is, for the time being, the head of the party that placed
him in position; and the head of the party thus in position can not be
destroyed without the disintegration of the members and the destruction of
the body itself. I suppose the Senator, however, was at his favorite
amusement of "shooting at the lump." The "lump" heretofore has been those
Democratic Senators who dissented from him: this time he involved
Democrats all over the country. Not even the presiding officer, whose
position seals his lips, could escape him. And here let me say that I
found nothing in the extract read from that gentleman's address, which,
construed as was no doubt intended, does not meet my approval; but if
tried by the modern lexicon of the Senator, it might be rendered a
contradiction to his avowed opinions, and by the same mode of expounding,
non-intervention would be a sin of which the whole Democracy might be
convicted, under the indictment of squatter sovereignty. The language
quoted from the address of the Vice-President is to be construed as
understood at the time, at the place, and by men such as the one who used
it.
With that force which usually enters into his addresses--with even more
than his usual eloquence--the Senator referred to the scene which awaited
him upon his return to Chicago, when, as represented, he met an infuriated
mob, who assailed him for having maintained the measures of 1850--those
compromises which, in the Northern section, it was urged had been passed
in the interest of the South. But, pray, what one of those measures was it
which excited the mob so described? Only one, I believe, was put in issue
at the North--the fugitive slave law; that one he did not vote for. But it
was the part of manliness to say that, though absent and not voting for
it, he approved of it. Such, I believe, was his commendable course on that
occasion. I give him, therefore, all due credit for not escaping from a
responsibility to which they might not have held him. Are we to give
perpetual thanks to any one because he did not yield to so senseless a
clamor, but conceded to us that small measure of constitutional
right--because he has complied with a requirement so plain that my regret
is that it ever required congressional intervention to enforce it? It
belonged to the honor of the States to execute that clause of the
Constitution. They should have executed it without congressional
intervention; congressional action should only have been useful to give
that uniformity of proceeding which State action could not have secured.
Concurring in the depicted evil of the destruction of the Democratic
organization, it must be admitted that such consequence is the inevitable
result of a radical difference of principle. The Senator laments the
disease, but instead of healing, aggravates it. While pleading the evils
of the disruption of the party, it is quite apparent that, in his mind,
there is another still greater calamity; for, through all his arraignment
of others, all his self-laudation, all his complaints of persecution, like
an air through its variations, appears and re-appears the action of the
Charleston Convention. That seemed to be the beginning and the end of his
solicitude. The oft-told tale of his removal from the chairmanship of the
Committee on Territories had to be renewed and connected with that
convention, and even assumed as the basis on which his strength was
founded in that convention. I think the Senator did himself injustice. I
think his long Career and distinguished labors, his admitted capacity for
good hereafter, constitute a better reason for the support which he
received, than the fact that his associates in the Senate had not chosen
to put him in a particular position in the organization of this body. It
is enough that that fact did not divert support from him; and I am aware
of none of his associates here who have forced it upon public attention
with a view to affect him.
He claims that an arraignment made against his Democracy has been answered
by the action of a majority of the Convention at Charleston; and then
proceeds to inform the minority men that he would scorn to be the
candidate of a party unless he received a majority of its votes. There was
no use in making that declaration; it requires not only a majority, but,
under our ruling, a vote of two-thirds, for a nomination. It was
unnecessary for any body to feel scorn toward that which he could not
receive. Other unfortunate wights might mourn the event; it belonged to
the Senator from Illinois to scorn it. The remark of Mr. Lowndes, which
has been so often quoted, and which, beautiful in itself, has acquired
additional value by time, that the Presidency was an office neither to be
sought nor declined, has no application, therefore, to the Senator, for,
under certain contingencies, he says he would decline it. It does not
devolve on me to decide whether he has sought it or not.
But, sir, what is the danger which now besets the Democratic party? Is it,
as has been asserted, the doctrine of intervention by Congress, and is
that doctrine new? Is the idea that protection, by Congress, to all rights
of person or property, wherever it has jurisdiction, so dangerous that, in
the language employed by the Senator, it would sweep the Democratic party
from the face of the earth? For what was our Government instituted? Why
did the States confer upon the Federal Government the great functions
which it possesses? For protection--mainly for protection beyond the
municipal power of the States. I shall have occasion, in the progress of
my remarks, to cite some authority, and to trace this from a very early
period. I will first, however, notice an assault which the Senator has
thought proper to make upon certain States, one of which is, in part,
represented by myself. He says they are seceders, bolters, because they
withdrew from a party convention when it failed to announce their
principles. There can be no tie to bind me to a party beyond my will. I
will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to
its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or
not they do agree, and find that they differ--radically, essentially,
irreconcilably differ--what belongs to an honorable position except to
part? They can not consistently act together any longer. It devolves upon
them frankly to announce the difference, and each to pursue his separate
course.
The letter of Mr. Yancey--acknowledged to be a private letter, an
unguarded letter, but which, somehow or other, got into the press--was
read to sustain this general accusation against what are called the Cotton
States. I do not pretend to judge how far the Senator has the right here
to read a private letter, which, without the authority of the writer, has
gone into the public press. It is one of those questions which every man's
sense of propriety must, in his own case, decide. Whether or not the use
of that letter was justifiable, how is it to be assumed that the Southern
States are bound by any opinion there enunciated? How to be asserted that
we, the residents in those States, have pinned our faith to the sleeve of
any man, and that we will follow his behest, no matter whither he may go?
But was this the only source of information, or was the impression
otherwise sustained? Did Mr. Yancey, in his speech delivered at
Charleston, justify the conclusions which the Senator draws from this
letter? Did he admit them to be correct? There he might have found the
latest evidence, and the best authority. Speaking to that point, Mr.
Yancey said:
"It has been charged, in order to demoralize whatever influence we
might be entitled to, either from our personal or political
characteristics, or as representatives of the State of Alabama, that
we are disruptionists, disunionists _per se_; that we desire to break
up the party in the State of Alabama--to break up the party of the
Union, and to dissolve the Union itself. Each and all of these
allegations, come from what quarter they may, I pronounce to be false.
There is no disunionist, that I know of, in the delegation from the
State of Alabama. There is no disruptionist that I know of; and if
there are factionists in our delegation, they could not have got in
there, with the knowledge upon the part of our State Convention that
they were of so unenviable a character. We come here with two great
purposes: first, to save the constitutional rights of the South, if it
lay in our power to do so. We desire to save the South by the best
means that present themselves to us; and the State of Alabama believes
that the best means now in existence is the organization of the
Democratic party, if we shall be able to persuade it to adopt the
constitutional basis upon which we think the South alone can be
saved."
He further says:
"We have come here, then, with the twofold purpose of saving the
country and saving the Democracy; and if the Democracy will not lend
itself to that high, holy, and elevated purpose; if it can not elevate
itself above the mere question of how perfect shall be its mere
personal organization, and how wide-spread shall be its mere voting
success, then we say to you, gentlemen, mournfully and regretfully,
that, in the opinion of the State of Alabama, and, I believe, of the
whole South, you have failed in your mission, and it will be our duty
to go forth, and make an appeal to the loyalty of the country to stand
by that Constitution which party organizations have deliberately
rejected." [Applause.]
Mr. Yancey answers for himself. It was needless to go back to old letters.
Here were his remarks delivered before the convention, speaking to the
point in issue, and answering both as to his purposes and as to the
motives of those with whom he conferred and acted.
The Senator next cited the resolutions of the State of Alabama; and here
he seemed to rest the main point in his argument. The Senator said that
Alabama, in 1856, had demanded of the Democratic convention,
non-intervention, and that, in 1860, she had retired from the convention
because it insisted upon non-intervention. He read one of the resolutions
of the Alabama Convention of 1856; but the one which bore upon the point
was not read. The one which was conclusive as to the position of Alabama
then, and its relation to her position now, was exactly the one that was
omitted--I read from the resolutions of this year--was as follows:
"_Resolved, further_, That we re-affirm so much of the first
resolution of the platform adopted in the convention by the Democracy
of this State, on the 8th of January, 1856, as relates to the subject
of slavery, to-wit."
It then goes on to quote from that resolution of 1856, as follows:
"The unqualified right of the people of the slaveholding States to
the protection of their property in the States, in the Territories,
and in the wilderness, in which territorial governments are as yet
unorganized."
That was the resolution of 1856; and like it was one of February, 1848:
"That it is the duty of the General Government by all proper
legislation, to secure an entry into those Territories to all the
citizens of the United States, together with their property, of every
description; and that the same shall be protected by the United
States, while the Territories are under its authority."
So stands the record of that State which is now held responsible for
retiring, and is alleged to have withdrawn because she received now what,
in former times, she had demanded as the full measure of her rights. Did
she receive it? The argument could only be made by concealing the fact
that her resolutions of 1848 and 1856 asserted the right to protection,
and claimed it from the General Government. What, then, is the necessary
inference? That, in the Cincinnati platform, they believed they obtained
that which they asserted, or that which necessarily involved it. So much
for the point of faith; so much for the point of consistency in the
assertion of right. But if it were otherwise; if they had neglected to
assert a right; would that destroy it? If they had failed at some time to
claim this protection, are they to be estopped, in all time to come, from
claiming it? Constitutional right is eternal--not to be sacrificed by any
body of men. A single man may revive it at any period of the existence of
the Constitution. So the argument would be worthless, if the facts were as
stated. That they are not so stated, is shown by the record.
Here allow me to say, in all sincerity, that I dislike thus to speak about
conventions; it does not belong to the duties of the Senate; we did not
assemble here to make a President, except in the single contingency of a
failure by the people and by the House of Representatives to elect. When
that contingency arrives, the question will be before us. I am sorry that
it should have been prematurely introduced. But since the action of the
recent convention at Charleston is presented as the basis of argument, it
may be as well to refer to it, and see what it is. The majority report,
presented by seventeen States of the Union, and those the States most
reliable to give Democratic votes--the States counted so certain to give
Democratic votes that they have been regarded as a fixed basis, a nucleus
to which others were to be attracted--these seventeen States reported to
the convention a series of resolutions, one of which asserted the right to
protection. A minority of States reported another series, excluding the
avowal of the right--not exactly denying it, but not avowing it--and a
second minority report was submitted, being the Cincinnati platform, pure
and simple. It is true that a majority of delegates adopted the minority
report, but not a majority of States, nor does it appear, by an analysis
of the votes, and the best evidence I have been able to obtain, that it
was by a majority of delegates, if each had been left to his own choice;
but that, by one of those ingenious arrangements--one of those incidents
which, among jurists, is described as the favor the vigilant receives from
the law--it so happened that, in certain States, the delegates were
instructed to vote as a unit; in other States they were not; so that,
wherever they were instructed to vote as a unit, the vote must so be cast,
and wherever they were not, they might disintegrate. Thus minorities were
bound in one instance, and released in another; and, by a comparison made
by those who had an opportunity to know, it appears that the minority
report could not have got a majority of the delegates, if each delegate
had been permitted to cast his own vote in the Convention. Neither could
it have obtained, as appears by the action of the committee, in a majority
of the States, if they had been spoken as such. So that this vaunt as to
the effect of the adoption of the platform by a majority, seems to have
very little of substance in it. Again, I find that, after this adoption
of a platform, a delegate from Tennessee offered a resolution:
"That all the citizens of the United States have an equal right to
settle, with their property, in the Territories of the United States;
and that, under the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States, which we recognize as a correct exposition of the Constitution
of the United States, neither their rights of person or property can
be destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation."
It does not appear that a vote was taken on it. There is a current belief
that it would have been adopted. If it had been, it would have been an
acknowledgment by the Democracy, in convention assembled, that the
question had been settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court. But in
the progress of the convention, when they came to balloting, it appears,
by an analysis of the vote for candidates, that the Senator from Illinois
received from seventeen undoubted Democratic States of the Union, casting
one hundred and twenty-seven electoral votes, but eleven votes. It is not
such a great triumph, then, in the Democratic view, as is claimed. It does
not suffice to add up the number of votes where they do not avail. It is
not fair to bring the votes of Vermont, where I believe nobody expects we
shall be successful, and count them for a particular candidate. The
electoral votes--and these alone, tell upon the result; and it appears
that in those States which have been counted certain to cast their
electoral votes for the candidate who might have been nominated at that
convention, the Senator received but eleven. This is but meagre claim to
bind us to his car as the successful champion of the majority. This is but
small basis for the boast that his hopes were gratified, that he would not
receive the nomination unless sustained by a majority of the party, and
that his opinions had received the indorsement of the Democracy.
My devotion to the party is life-long. If the assertion be allowable, it
may be said that I inherited my political principles. I derive them from a
revolutionary father--one of the earnest friends of Mr. Jefferson; who,
after the revolution which achieved our independence, bore his full part
in the civil revolution of 1800, which emancipated us from federal
usurpation and consolidation. I therefore have all that devotion to party
which belongs to habitual reverence and confidence. But, sir, that
devotion to party rests on the assumption that it is to maintain sound
principles; that it is to strive hereafter, as heretofore, to carry out
the great cardinal creed in which the Democratic party was founded. When
the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 are discarded; when we fly from the
extreme of monarchy to land in the danger to republics, anarchy, and the
Democratic party says its arm is paralyzed--can not be raised to maintain
constitutional rights, my devotion to its organization is at an end. It
fails thenceforward in the purposes for which it was established; and if
there be a constitutional party in the land which, in the language of Mr.
Jefferson, would find in the vigor of the Federal Government the best hope
for our liberty and security, to that party I should attach myself
whenever that sad contingency arose.
The resolutions of 1798 and 1799, though directed against usurpation, were
equally directed against the dangers of anarchy. Their principles are
alike applicable to both. Their cardinal creed was a Federal Government,
according to the grants conferred upon it, and these righteously
administered. It is not fair to the men who taught us the lessons of
Democracy that they should be held responsible for a theory which leaves
the Federal Government, as one who has abdicated all authority, to stand
at the mercy of local usurpations. Least of all does their teaching
maintain that this Government has no power over the Territories; that this
Government has no obligation to protect the rights of person and property
in the Territories; for, among the first acts under the Constitution, was
one which both asserted and exercised the power.
After the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, an act was passed, to
which reference is frequently made as being a confirmation of the
ordinance of 1787; and this has been repeated so often that it has
received general belief. There was a constitutional provision which
required all obligations and engagements under the confederation to hold
good under the Constitution. If there was an obligation or an engagement
growing out of the ordinance of 1787, out of the deed of cession by
Virginia, it was transmitted to the Government established under the
Constitution; but that Congress under the Constitution gave it no
vitality--that they added no force to it, is apparent from the fact which
is so often relied upon as authority. It was in view of this fact, in full
remembrance of this and of other facts connected with it, that Mr. Madison
said, in relation to passing regulations for the Territories, that
"Congress did not regard the interdiction of slavery among the needful
regulations contemplated by the Constitution, since, in none of the
territorial governments created by them, was such an interdict found." I
am aware that Justice McLean has viewed this as an historical error of Mr.
Madison. I shall not assume to decide between such high authorities. The
act is as follows:
"_An Act to provide for the government of the Territory north-west of
the Ohio River._
"WHEREAS, In order that the ordinance of the United States in Congress
assembled, for the government of the territory north-west of the river
Ohio, may continue to have full effect, it is requisite that certain
provisions should be made so as to adapt the same to the present
Constitution of the United States.
"SECTION 1. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That, in all
cases in which, by the said ordinance, any information is to be given,
or communication made, by the governor of the said Territory to the
United States in Congress assembled, or to any of their officers, it
shall be the duty of the said governor to give such information, and
to make such communication, to the President of the United States; and
the President shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent
of the Senate, shall appoint all officers which, by the said
ordinance, were to have been appointed by the United States in
Congress assembled; and all officers so appointed shall be
commissioned by him; and in all cases where the United States in
Congress assembled might, by the said ordinance, make any commission,
or remove from any office, the President is hereby declared to have
the same powers to revocation and removal.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That in the case of the death,
removal, resignation, or necessary absence of the governor of the said
Territory, the secretary thereof shall be, and he is hereby authorized
and required to execute all the powers and perform all the duties of
the governor during the vacancy occasioned by the removal,
resignation, or necessary absence of the said governor.
"Approved August 7, 1789."
All that is to be found in this act which favors the supposition and
frequent assertion that, under the Constitution, the ordinance of 1787 was
ratified and confirmed is to be found in the preamble, and that preamble
so vaguely alludes to it that the idea is refuted by reference to an act
which followed soon afterwards--the act of 1793--from which I will read a
single section:
"SEC. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That when a person held to labor
in any of the United States, or in either of the Territories on the
north-west or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall
escape into any other of the said States or Territories, the person to
whom such service or labor may be due, his agent, or attorney, is
hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor," etc.
Is it not apparent that, when the Congress legislated in 1793, they
recognized the existence of slavery and protected that kind of property in
the territory north-west of the river Ohio, and is it not conclusive that
they did not intend, by the act of 1789, to confirm, ratify, and give
effect to the ordinance of 1787, which would have excluded it?
This doctrine of protection, then, is not new. It goes back to the
foundation of the Government. It is traceable down through all the early
controversies; and they arose at least as early as 1790. It is found in
the messages of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, and in the legislation of
Congress; and also in the messages of the elder Adams. There was not one
of the first four Presidents of the United States who did not recognize
this obligation of protection, who did not assert this power on the part
of the Federal Government; and not one of them ever attempted to pervert
it to a power to destroy. If division in the Democratic party is to arise
now, because of this doctrine, it is not from the change by those who
assert it, but of those who deny it. It is not from the introduction of a
new feature in the theory of our Government, but from the denial of that
which was recognized in its very beginning.
As I understood the main argument of the Senator, it was based upon the
general postulate that the Democratic Convention of 1848 recognized a new
doctrine, a doctrine which inhibited the General Government from
interfering in any way, either for the protection of property or
otherwise, with the local affairs of a Territory; he held the party
responsible for all the opinions entertained by the candidate in 1848,
because the party had nominated him, and he quoted the record to show what
States, by voting for him, had committed themselves to the doctrine of the
"Nicholson letter." He even quoted South Carolina, represented by that man
who became famous for a single act, and, as South Carolinians said,
without authority at home to sustain it. But this was cited as pledging
the faith of South Carolina to the doctrine of the "Nicholson letter;"
and, worse than all, the Senator did this, though he knew that the
doctrine of the "Nicholson letter" was the subject of controversy for
years subsequently; that, what was the true construction of that letter,
entered into the canvass in the Southern States; that the construction
which Mr. Cass himself placed upon it at a subsequent period was there
denied; and the Senator might have remembered, if he had chosen to
recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to explain to him, ten
years ago, the fact that I repudiated the doctrine of that letter at the
time it was published, and that the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh
crucified me for the construction which I placed upon it; there were men
mean enough to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson
letter was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General
Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly reviewed it.
He uttered, for him, very harsh language against all who had doubted the
true construction of his letter, and he construed it just as I had done
during the canvass of 1848. It remains only to add that I supported Mr.
Cass, not because of the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite
of it; because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic
cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two houses of Congress, and he as
honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a safer reliance than
his opponent, who personally possessed my confidence as much as any man
living, but who was of and must draw his advisers from a party, the tenets
of which I believed to be opposed to the interests of the country as they
were to all my political convictions.
I little thought at that time that my advocacy of Mr. Cass, upon such
grounds as these, or his support by the State of which I am a citizen,
would at any future day be quoted as an indorsement of the opinions
contained in the Nicholson letter, as those opinions were afterwards
defined. But it is not only upon this letter, but equally upon the
resolutions of the convention as constructive of that letter, that he
rested his argument. I will here say to the Senator that if, at any time,
I do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as I could
take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct me.
But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt about its
construction; there were men who asserted that they had positive authority
for saying that it meant that the people of a Territory could only exclude
slavery when the Territory should form a constitution and be admitted as a
State. This doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that
doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If the true
construction had been certainly known he would have had no chance to get
it. Our majority went down from thousands to hundreds, as it was. In
Alabama the decrease was greater. It was not that the doctrine was
countenanced, but the doubt as to the true meaning of the letter, and the
constantly reiterated assertion that it only meant the Territories when
they should be admitted as States, enabled him to carry those States.
But if I mistook the Senator there, I think probably I did not on another
point: that he claimed the support of certain Southern men for Mr.
Richardson as Speaker of the House to be by them an acknowledgment of the
doctrine of squatter sovereignty.
I suppose those Southern men who voted for Mr. Richardson voted for him as
I did for Mr. Cass, in despite of his opinions on that question, because
they preferred Mr. Richardson to Mr. Banks, even with squatter
sovereignty. They considered that the latter was carrying an amount of
heresies which greatly exceeded the value of squatter sovereignty. It was
a choice of evils--not an indorsement of his opinions. Neither did they
this year indorse the opinions on that point of Mr. McClernand when they
voted for him. According to the Senator's argument I could show him that
Illinois was committed to the doctrine of federal protection to property
in the Territories and the remedy of secession as a State right; committed
irrevocably, unmistakably, with no right to plead any ignorance of the
political creed of the individual, or the meaning of his words.
In 1852--I refer to it with pride--Illinois did me the honor to vote
consistently for me for the Vice-Presidency, up to the time of
adjournment; though in 1850, and in 1851, I had done all these acts which
have been spoken of, and the Senator has admitted my consistency, in
opinions which were avowed with at least such perspicuity as left nobody
in doubt as to my opinion. Did Illinois then adopt my theory of protection
in the Territories, or of the right of State secession? No, sir. I hold
them to no such consequences. Some of the old inhabitants of Illinois may
have remembered me when their northern frontier was a wilderness, when
they and I had kind relations in the face of hostile Indians. Some of them
may have remembered me, and, I believe, kindly, as associated with them,
at a later period, on the fields of Mexico. The Senator himself, I know,
remembered kindly his association with me in the halls of Congress. It was
these bonds which gave me the confidence of the State of Illinois. I never
misconstrued it. I never pretended to put them in the attitude of adopting
all my opinions. Never required it, never desired it, save as in so far as
wishing all men would agree with me, confidently believing my position to
be true. At a later period, and when these questions were more important
in the public mind, when public attention has been more directed to them,
when public opinion has been more matured, at the very time when the
Senator claims that his doctrine culminated, the State of Illinois voted
for a gentleman for Vice-President at Cincinnati who held the same
opinions with myself, or, if there was a difference, held them to a
greater extreme--I mean General Quitman.
MR. DOUGLAS. We made no test on any one.
MR. DAVIS. Then, how did the South become responsible for the doctrine of
General Cass, by consenting to his nomination in 1848, and supporting his
election? But at a later period, down to the present session, what is the
position in which the Senator places his friends--those sterling
Democrats, uncompromising Anti-Know-Nothings; men who give no quarter to
the American party, and yet who voted this year for Mr. Smith, of North
Carolina, to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. Is the Senator
answered? Does he not see that there is no justice in assuming a vote for
an individual to be the entire adoption of his opinions?
He cited, in this connection, a resolution of 1848, as having been framed
to cover the doctrines of the Nicholson letter; and he claimed thus to
have shown that the convention not only understood it, but adopted it, and
made it the party creed, and that we were bound to it from that period
forward. He even had that resolution of 1848 read, in order that there
should be, at no future time, any question as to the principle which the
party then avowed; that it should be fixed as a starting point in all the
future progress of Democracy. I was surprised at the importance the
Senator attached to that resolution of 1848, because it was not new; it
was not framed to meet the opinions of the Nicholson letter, but came down
from a period as remote as 1840; was copied into the platform of 1844, and
again into that of 1848, being the expression which the condition of the
country in 1840 had induced--a declaration of opinion growing out of the
agitation in the two houses of Congress at that day, and the fearful
strides which antislavery was making, and which Mr. Calhoun had labored to
check by the declaration of constitutional truths, as set forth in his
Senate resolutions of 1837-'8.
That there may be no mistake on this point, and particularly as the
Senator attached special importance to it, I will turn to the platform of
1840, and read from it, so that it shall be found to be--
MR. DOUGLAS. It is conceded.
MR. DAVIS. The Senator concedes the fact, that the resolution of 1848 was
a copy of that of 1840, and with the concession falls his argument. The
platforms of 1840 and 1844 were re-affirmed in 1848; and, consequently,
the resolution of '48 being identical with that of '40, was not a
construction of the letter written in 1847.
True to its instincts and to its practices, the Democratic party, from
time to time, continued to add to their "platform" whatever was needful
for action by the Government in the condition of the country. Thus, in
1844, they re-asserted the platform of 1840; and they added thereto,
because of a question then pending, that--
"The re-annexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period, is a
great American measure, which the convention recommend to the cordial
support of the Democracy of the Union."
In 1848 they re-adopted the resolutions of 1844; and were not a little
laughed at for keeping up the question of Texas after it had been annexed.
In 1852 a new question had arisen; the measures of 1850 had presented,
with great force to the public mind, the necessity for some expression of
opinion upon the disturbing questions which the measures of 1850 had been
designed to quiet. Therefore, in 1852, the party, true to its obligation
to announce its principles, and to meet issues as they arise, said:
"_Resolved_, That the foregoing proposition (referring to the
resolution of 1848) covers, and was intended to embrace, the whole
subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and, therefore, the
Democratic party in the Union, standing on this national platform,
will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the act known as
the compromise measure, settled by the last Congress, the act for
reclaiming fugitives from labor included; which act, being designed to
carry out an express provision of the Constitution, can not, with
fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair
its efficacy.
"_Resolved_, That the Democratic party will restrain all attempts at
renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slave
question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."
This was the addition made in 1852, and it was made because of the
agitation which then prevailed through the country against the fugitive
slave act, and it was because the fugitive slave act, and that alone, was
assailed, that the Democratic convention met the issue on that measure
specifically, and for the same reason it received the approbation of the
Southern States. Had this been considered as the indorsement of the slave
trade bill for the District of Columbia, it would not have received their
approval. The agitation was in relation to recovering fugitive slaves, and
the Democratic party boldly and truly met the living issue, and declared
its position upon it.
In 1856 other questions had arisen. It was necessary to meet them. The
convention did meet them, and met them in a manner which was satisfactory,
because it was believed to be full. I will not weary the Senate by reading
the resolutions of 1856; they are familiar to every body. I only quote a
portion of them:
"The American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained
in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the 'slavery
question' upon which the great national idea of the people of this
whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the
Union--non-interference by Congress with slavery in State and
Territory, or in the District of Columbia.
"That, by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the
organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with
or without domestic slavery, as they may elect, the equal rights of
all States will be preserved intact, the original compacts of the
Constitution maintained inviolate, and the perpetuity and expansion of
this Union insured to its utmost capacity of embracing, in peace and
harmony, every future American State that may be constituted or
annexed with a republican form of government."
Pray, what can this mean? Squatter sovereignty? Incapacity of the Federal
Government to enact any law for the protection of slave property anywhere?
Could that be in the face of a struggle that we were constantly carrying
on against the opponents of the fugitive slave law? Could that be, in the
face of the fact that a majority had trodden down our constitutional
rights in the District of Columbia, by legislating in relation to that
particular character of property, and that they had failed to redeem a
promise they had sacredly made to pass a law for the protection of slave
property, so as to punish any one who should seduce, or entice, or abduct
it from an owner in this District?
With all these things fresh in mind, what did they mean? They meant that
Congress should not decide the question, whether that institution should
exist within a Territory or not. They did not mean to withdraw from the
inhabitants of the District of Columbia that protection to which they were
entitled, and which is almost annually given by legislation; and yet
States and Territories and the District of Columbia are all grouped
together, as the points upon which this idea rests, and to which it is
directed. It meant that Congress was not to legislate to interfere with
the rights of property anywhere; not to attempt to decide what should be
the institutions maintained anywhere; but surely not to disclaim the right
to protect property, whether on sea or on land, wherever the Federal
Government had jurisdiction and power. But some stress has been laid upon
the resolution, which says that this principle should be applied to
"The organization of the Territories, and to the admission of new
States, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect."
What does "may elect" mean? Does it refer to organization of the
Territory? Who may elect? Congress organizes the Territories. Did it mean
that the Territories were to elect? It does not say so. What does it say?
"That by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the
organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with
or without domestic slavery, as they may elect."
And here it met a question which had disturbed the peace of the country,
and well-nigh destroyed the Union--the right of a State holding slaves to
be admitted into the Union. It was declared here that the State so
admitted should elect whether it would or would not have slaves. There is
nothing in that which logically applies to the organization of a
Territory. But if this be in doubt, let us come to the last resolution,
which says:
"We recognize the right of the people of all the Territories,
including Kansas and Nebraska, acting through the legally and
fairly-expressed will of a majority of actual residents--"
Does it stop there? No--
"and whenever the number of their inhabitants justifies it, to form a
constitution, with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into
the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States."
If there had been any doubt before as to what "may elect" referred to,
this resolution certainly removed it. It is clear they meant, that when a
Territory had a sufficient number of inhabitants, and came to form a
constitution, then it might decide the question as it pleased. From that
doctrine, I know no Democrat who now dissents.
I have thus, because of the assertion that this was a new idea attempted
to be interjected into the Democratic creed, gone over some portion of its
history. Important by its connection with the existing agitation, and last
in the series, is an act with the ushering in of which the Senator is more
familiar than myself, and on which he made remarks, to which, it is
probable, some of those who acted with him, will reply. I wish merely to
say, in relation to the Kansas-Nebraska act, that there are expressions in
it which seem to me not of doubtful meaning, such as, "in all cases
involving title to slaves, or involving the question of personal freedom,"
there should be a trial before the courts, and without reference to the
amount involved, an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Territory, and from
thence to the Supreme Court of the United States. If there was no right of
property there; if we had no right to recognize it there; if some
sovereign was to determine whether it existed or not, why did we say that
the Supreme Court of the United States, in the last resort, should decide
the question? If it was an admitted thing, by that bill, that the
Territorial Legislature should decide it, why did we provide for taking
the case to the Supreme Court? If it had been believed then, as it is
asserted now, that a Territory possessed all the power of a State; that
the inhabitants of a Territory could meet in convention and decide the
question as the people of a State might do, there was nothing to be
carried to the Supreme Court. You can not appeal from the decision of a
constitutional convention of a State to the Supreme Court of the United
States, to decide whether slave property shall be prohibited or admitted
within the limits of a State; and if they rest on the same footing, what
is the meaning of that clause of the bill?
But this organic law further provides, just as the resolution of the
convention had done, that when a legal majority of the residents of either
Territory formed a constitution, then, at their will, they might recognize
or exclude slavery, and come into the Union as co-equal States. This fixes
the period, defines the time at which the territorial inhabitants may
perform this act, and clearly forbids the idea that it was intended, by
those who enacted the law, to acknowledge that power to be existent in the
inhabitants of a Territory during their territorial condition. If I am
mistaken in this; if there was a contemporaneous construction of it
differing from this, the Senators who sit around me and who were then
members of the body, will not fail to remember it.
The Senator asserts that, in relation to this point, those who acted with
him have changed, and claims for himself to have been consistent. If this
be so, it proves nothing as to the present, and only individual opinions
as to the past. I do not regard consistency as a very high virtue;
neither, it appears, does he; for he told us that if it could be shown to
him that he was in error on any point, he would change his opinion. How
could that be? Who would undertake to show the Senator that he was in
error? Who would undertake to measure the altitude of the Colossus who
bestrides the world, and announces for, and of, and by himself, "We, the
Democracy," as though, in his person, all that remained of the party was
now concentrated! Other men are permitted to change, because other men may
be mistaken; and if they are honest, when convicted of their error, they
must change, but how can one expect to convince the Senator, who, where
all is change, stands changeless still?
In the course of his reply to me--if indeed it may be called such; it
seemed to be rather a review of every thing except what I had said--he set
me the bad example of going into the canvass in my own State. It is the
first, I trust it will be the last time, I shall follow his example; and
now only to the extent of the occasion, where criticism was invited by
unusual publicity. In the canvass which the Senator had with his opponent,
Mr. Lincoln, and the debates of which have been published in a book, we
find much which, if it be consistent with his course as I had known it,
only proves to me how little able I was to understand his meaning in
former times.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill having agreed the right for which I contend to be
the subject of judicial decision; it having specially provided the mode
and facilitated the process by which that right should be brought to the
courts and finally decided; not allowing any check to be interposed
because of amount, that bill having continued the provision which had been
introduced into the New Mexico Bill, how are we to understand the
Senator's declarations, that, let the Supreme Court decide as they may,
the inhabitants of a Territory may lawfully admit or exclude slavery as
they please? What a hollow promise was given to us in the provision
referring this vexed question to judicial decision, in order that we might
reach a point on which we might peacefully rest, if the inhabitants of the
Territories for which Congress had legislated could still decide the
question and set aside any decision of the Supreme Court, and do this
lawfully. I ask, was it not to give us a stone, when he promised us bread;
to incorporate a provision in the organic act securing the right of appeal
to the courts, if, as now stated, those courts were known to be powerless
to grant a remedy?
Here there is a very broad distinction to be drawn between the power of
the inhabitants of a Territory, or of any local community, lawfully to do
a thing, and forcibly to do it. If the Senator had said, that whatever
might be the decision of the Supreme Court, whatever might be the laws of
Congress, whatever might be the laws of the Territories, in the face of an
infuriated mob, such as he described on another occasion, it would be
impossible for a man to hold a slave against their will, he would but have
avowed the truism that in our country the law waits upon public opinion.
But he says that they can do it lawfully. If his position had been such as
I have just stated, it would have struck me as the opinion I had always
supposed him to entertain. More than that, it would have struck me as the
opinion which no one could gainsay; which, at any time, I would have been
ready to admit. Nothing is more clear than that no law could prevail in
our country, where force, as a governmental mean, is almost unknown,
against a pervading sentiment in the community. Every body admits that;
and it was in that view of the case that this question has been so often
declared to be a mere abstraction. It is an abstraction so far as any one
would expect in security to hold against the fixed purpose and
all-pervading will of the community, whether territorial or other, a
species of property, ambulatory, liable, because it has mind enough to go,
to be enticed away whenever freed from physical restraint, and which would
be nearly valueless if so restrained. It may be an abstraction as a
practical question of pecuniary advantage, but it is not the less dear to
those who assert the constitutional right. It would constitute a very good
reason why no one should ever say there was an attempt to force slavery on
an unwilling people, but no reason why the right should not be recognized
by the Federal Government as one belonging to the equal privileges and
immunities of every citizen of the United States.
But the main point of the Senator's argument--and it deserved to be so,
because it is the main question now in the public mind--was, what is the
meaning of non-intervention? He defined it to be synonymous with squatter
sovereignty, or with popular sovereignty....
The Senator and myself do not seem to be getting any nearer together;
because the very thing which he describes constitutes the only case in
which I would admit the necessity, and, consequently, the propriety of the
people acting without authority. If men were cast upon a desert island,
the sovereignty of which was unknown, over which no jurisdiction was
exercised, they would find themselves necessitated to establish rules
which should subsist between themselves; and so the people of California,
when the Congress failed to give them a government; when it refused to
enact a territorial law; when, paralyzed by the power of contending
factions, it left the immigrants to work their own unhappy way; they had a
right--a right growing out of the necessity of the case--to make rules for
the government of their local affairs. But this was not sovereignty. It
was the exercise, between man and man, of a social function necessary to
preserve peace in the absence of any controlling power--essential to
conserve the relations of person and property. The sovereignty, if it
existed in any organization or government of the world, remained there
still; and whenever that sovereignty extended itself over them, whether
shipwrecked mariners, or adventurous Americans--whether cast off by the
sea, or whether finding their weary way across the desert plains which
lie west of the Mississippi--whenever the hand of the Government holding
sovereign jurisdiction was laid upon them, they became subject; their
sovereign control of their own affairs ceased. In our case, the directing
hand of the Government is laid upon them at the moment of the enactment of
an organic law. Therefore, the very point at which the Senator begins his
sovereignty, is the point at which the necessity, and, in my view, the
claim ceases.
But suppose that a territorial legislature, acting under an organic law,
not defining their municipal powers further than has been general in such
laws, should pass a law to exclude slave property, would the Senator vote
to repeal it?
MR. DOUGLAS. I will answer. I would not, because the Democratic party is
pledged to non-intervention; because, furthermore, whether such an act is
constitutional or not is a judicial question. If it is unconstitutional,
the court will so decide, and it will be null and void without repeal. If
it is constitutional, the people have a right to pass it. If
unconstitutional, it is void, and the court will ascertain the fact; and
we pledged our honors to abide the decision....
MR. DAVIS. If it will not embarrass the Senator, I would ask him if, as
Chief Executive of the United States, he would sign a bill to protect
slave property in State, Territory, or District of Columbia--an act of
Congress?
MR. DOUGLAS. It will be time enough for me, or any other man, to say what
bills he will sign, when he is in a position to exercise the power.
MR. DAVIS. The Senator has a right to make me that answer. I was only
leading on to a fair understanding of the Senator and myself about
non-intervention....
I think it now appears that, in the minds of the gentlemen,
non-intervention is a shadowy, unsubstantial doctrine, which has its
application according to the circumstances of the case. It ceased to
apply when it was necessary to annul an act in Kansas in relation to the
political rights of the inhabitants. It had no application when it was
necessary to declare that the old French laws should not be revived in the
Territory of Kansas after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; but it
rose an insurmountable barrier when we proposed to sweep away the Mexican
decrees, usages, or laws, and leave the Constitution and laws of the
United States unfettered in their operation in the Territory acquired from
Mexico. It thus seems to have a constantly varying application, and, as I
have not yet reached a good definition, one which quite satisfies me, I
must take it as I find it in the Senator's speech, in which he says
Alabama asserted the doctrine of non-intervention in 1856. The Alabama
resolutions of 1856 asserted the right to protection, and the duty of the
Federal Government to give it. So, if he stands upon the resolutions of
Alabama in 1856, non-intervention is very good doctrine, and exactly
agrees with what I believe--no assumption, by the Federal Government, of
any powers over the municipal territorial governments which is not
necessary; that the hand of Federal power shall be laid as lightly as
possible upon any territorial community; that its laws shall be limited to
the necessities of each case; that it shall leave the inhabitants as
unfettered in the determination of their local legislation as the rights
of the people of the States will permit, and the duty of the General
Government will allow. But when non-intervention is pressed to the point
of depriving the arm of the Federal Government of its one great function
of protection, then it is the doctrine which we denounce--which we call
squatter sovereignty; the renunciation by Congress, and the turning over
to the inhabitants a sovereignty which, rightfully, it does not belong to
the one to grant or the other to claim, and, further and worse, thus to
divest the Federal Government of a duty which the Constitution requires it
to perform.
To show that this view is not new--that it does not rest singly on the
resolutions of Alabama, I will refer to a subject, the action upon which
has already been quoted in this debate--the Oregon Bill. During the
discussion of the Oregon Bill, I offered in the Senate, June 23, 1848, an
amendment which I will read:
"_Provided_, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed
as to authorize the prohibition of domestic slavery in said Territory,
whilst it remains in the condition of a Territory of the United
States."
Upon this, I will cite the authority of Mr. Calhoun, in his speech on the
Oregon Bill, June 27, 1848:
"The twelfth section of this bill is intended to assert and maintain
this demand of the non-slaveholding States, while it remains a
Territory, not openly or directly, but indirectly, by extending the
provisions of the bill for the establishment of the Iowa Territory to
this, and by ratifying the acts of the informal and self-constituted
government of Oregon, which, among others, contains one prohibiting
the introduction of slavery. It thus, in reality, adopts what is
called the Wilmot proviso, not only for Oregon, but, as the Bill now
stands, for New Mexico and California. The amendment, on the contrary,
moved by the Senator from Mississippi, near me [Mr. Davis], is
intended to assert and maintain the position of the slave-holding
States. It leaves the Territory free and open to all the citizens of
the United States, and would overrule, if adopted, the act of the
self-constituted Territory of Oregon, and the twelfth section, as far
as it relates to the subject under consideration. We have thus fairly
presented the grounds taken by the non-slave-holding and the
slave-holding States, or as I shall call them, for the sake of
brevity, the Northern and Southern States, in their whole extent, for
discussion."--_Appendix to Congressional Globe, Thirtieth Congress,
first Session_, p. 868.
I will quote also one of the speeches which he made near the close of his
life, at a time when he was so far wasted by disease that it was necessary
for him to ask the Senator from Virginia, who sits before me [Mr. Mason],
to read the speech which his tameless spirit impelled him to compose, but
which he was physically unable to deliver; and once again he came to the
Senate chamber, when standing yet more nearly on the confines of death; he
rose, his heart failing in its functions, his voice faltered, but his will
was so strong that he could not realize that the icy hand was upon him,
and he erroneously thought he was oppressed by the weight of his overcoat.
True to his devotion to the principles he had always advocated, clinging,
to the last hour of his life, to the duty to maintain the rights of his
constituents, still he was here, and his honored, though feeble, voice was
raised for the maintenance of the great principle to which his life had
been devoted. From the speech I read as follows:
"The plan of the administration can not save the Union, because it can
have no effect whatever towards satisfying the States composing the
Southern section of the Union, that they can, consistently with safety
and honor, remain in the Union. It is, in fact, but a modification of
the Wilmot proviso. It proposes to effect the same object--to exclude
the South from all territory acquired by the Mexican treaty. It is
well known that the South is united against the Wilmot proviso, and
has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to resist should it be
adopted. Its opposition _is not to the name_, but that which it
_proposes to effect_. That, the Southern States hold to be
unconstitutional, unjust, inconsistent with their equality as members
of the common Union, and calculated to destroy irretrievably the
equilibrium between the two sections. These objections equally apply
to what, for brevity, I will call the executive proviso. There is no
difference between it and the Wilmot, except in the mode of effecting
the object; and in that respect, I must say that the latter is much
the least objectionable. It goes to its object openly, boldly, and
distinctly. It claims for Congress unlimited power over the
Territories, and proposes to assert it over the territories acquired
from Mexico by a positive prohibition of slavery. Not so the executive
proviso. It takes an indirect course, and, in order to elude the
Wilmot proviso, and thereby avoid encountering the united and
determined resistance of the South, it denies, by implication, the
authority of Congress to legislate for the Territories, and claims
the right as belonging exclusively to the inhabitants of the
Territories. But to effect the object of excluding the South, it takes
care, in the meantime, to let in immigrants freely from the Northern
States, and all other quarters, except from the South, which it takes
special care to exclude by holding up to them the danger of having
their slaves liberated under the Mexican laws. The necessary
consequence is to exclude the South from the Territories, just as
effectually as would the Wilmot proviso. The only difference, in this
respect, is, that what one proposes to effect directly and openly, the
other proposes to effect indirectly and covertly.
"But the executive proviso is more objectionable than the Wilmot in
another and more important particular. The latter, to effect its
object, inflicts a dangerous wound upon the Constitution, by depriving
the Southern States, as joint partners and owners of the Territories,
of their rights in them; but it inflicts no greater wound than is
absolutely necessary to effect its object. The former, on the
contrary, while it inflicts the same wound, inflicts others equally
great, and, if possible, greater, as I shall next proceed to explain.
"In claiming the right for the inhabitants, instead of Congress, to
legislate for the Territories, the executive proviso assumes that the
sovereignty over the Territories is vested in the former, or, to
express it in the language used in a resolution offered by one of the
Senators from Texas [General Houston, now absent], they 'have the same
inherent right of self-government as the people in the States.' The
assumption is utterly unfounded, unconstitutional, without example,
and contrary to the entire practice of the Government, from its
commencement to the present time, as I shall proceed to
show."--_Calhoun's Works_, vol. 4, p. 562.
MR. DAVIS. I find that I must abridge, by abstaining from the reading of
extracts. When this question arose in 1820, Nathaniel Macon, by many
considered the wisest man of his day, held the proposed interference to be
unauthorized and innovative. In arguing against the Missouri Compromise,
as it was called--the attempt by Congress to prescribe where slaves might
or might not be held--the exercise, by the Federal Government north of a
certain point, of usurped power by an act of inhibition, Mr. Macon said
our true policy was that which had thus far guided the country in safety:
the policy of non-intervention. By non-intervention he meant the absence
of hostile legislation, not the absence of governmental protection. Our
doctrine on this point is not new, but that of our opponents is so.
The Senator from Illinois assumes that the congressional acts of 1850
meant no legislation in relation to slave property; while, in the face of
that declaration, stand the laws enacted in that year, and the promise of
another, which has not been enacted--laws directed to the question of
slavery and slave property; one even declaring, in certain contingencies,
as a penalty on the owner, the emancipation of his slave in the District
of Columbia. If no action upon the question was the prevailing opinion,
what does the legislation mean? Was it non-action in the District of
Columbia? Be it remembered, the resolution of the Cincinnati platform
says, "Non-interference, by Congress, with slavery in State and Territory,
or in the District of Columbia." They are all upon the same footing.
Again, he said that the Badger amendment was a declaration of no
protection to slave property. The Badger amendment declares that the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise shall not revive the laws or usages
which preëxisted that compromise; and the history of the times, so far as
I understand it, is, that it intended to assure those gentlemen who feared
that the laws of France would be revived in the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska, by the repeal of the act of 1820, and that they would be held
responsible for having, by congressional act, established slavery. The
Southern men did not desire Congress to establish slavery. It has been our
uniform declaration that we denied the power of the Federal Government
either to establish or prohibit it; that we claimed for it protection as
property recognized by the Constitution, and we claimed the right for it,
as property, to go, and to receive federal protection wherever the
jurisdiction of the United States is exclusive. We claim that the
Constitution of the United States, in recognizing this property, making it
the basis of representation, put it, not upon the footing which it holds
between foreign nations, but upon the basis of the compact or union of the
States; that, under the delegated grant to regulate commerce between the
States, it did not belong to a State; therefore, without breach of
contract, they can not, by any regulation, prohibit transit, and the
compact provided that they should not change the character of master and
slave in the case of a fugitive. Could Congress surrender, for the States
and their citizens, the claim and protection for those or other
constitutional rights, against invasion by a State? If not, surely it can
not be done in the case of a Territory, a possession of the States. The
word "protecting," in that amendment, referred to laws which
preëxisted--laws which it was not designed, by the Democrats, to revive
when they declared the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and, therefore,
I think, did not affect the question of constitutional right and of
federal power and duty.
In all these territorial bills we have the language "subject to the
Constitution;" that is to say, that the inhabitants are to manage their
local affairs in their own way, subject to the Constitution; which, I
suppose, might be rendered thus: "In their own way, provided their own way
shall be somebody else's way;" for "subject to the Constitution" means, in
accordance with an instrument with which the territorial inhabitants had
nothing to do; with the construction of which they were not concerned; in
the adoption of which they had no part, and in relation to which it has
sometimes been questioned whether they had any responsibility. My own
views, as the Senator is aware from previous discussions, (and it is
needless to repeat,) are that the Constitution is co-extensive with the
United States; that the designation includes the Territories, that they
are necessarily subject to the Constitution. But if they be subject to
the Constitution, and subject to the organic act, that is the language
used; that organic act being the law of Congress, that Constitution being
the compact of the States--the territorial inhabitants having no lot or
part in one or the other, save as they are imposed upon them--where is
their claim to sovereignty? Where is their right to do as they please? The
States have a compact, and the agent of the States gives to the
Territories a species of constitution in the organic act, which endures
and binds them until they throw off what the Senator on another occasion
termed the minority condition, and assume the majority condition as a
State. The remark to which I refer was on the bill to admit Iowa and
Florida into the Union. The Senator then said:
"The father may bind the son during his minority, but the moment that
he (the son) attains his majority, his fetters are severed, and he is
free to regulate his own conduct. So, sir, with the Territories; they
are subject to the jurisdiction and control of Congress during
infancy, their minority; but when they attain their majority, and
obtain admission into the Union, they are free from all restraints and
restrictions, except such as the Constitution of the United States
imposes upon each and all of the States."
This was the doctrine of territorial sovereignty--perhaps that is the
phrase--at that period. At a later period, in March, 1856, the Senator
said:
"The sovereignty of a Territory remains in abeyance, suspended in the
United States in trust for the people, until they shall be admitted
into the Union as a State. In the meantime, they are admitted to enjoy
and exercise all the rights and privileges of self-government, in
subordination to the Constitution of the United States, and in
obedience to the organic law passed by Congress in pursuance of that
instrument."
If it be admitted--and I believe there is no issue between the Senator and
myself on that point--that the Congress of the United States have no
right to pass a law excluding slaves from a Territory, or determining in
the Territory the relation of master and slave, of parent and child, of
guardian and ward; that they have no right anywhere to decide what is
property, but are only bound to protect such rights as preëxisted the
formation of the Union--to perform such functions as are intrusted to them
as the agent of the States--then how can Congress, thus fettered, confer
upon a corporation of its creation--upon a territorial legislature, by an
organic act, a power to determine what shall be property within the limits
of such Territory?
But, again, if it were admitted that the territorial inhabitants did
possess this sovereignty: that they had the right to do as they pleased on
all subjects, then would arise the question, if they were authorized,
through their representatives, thus to act, whence came the opposition to
what was called the Lecompton Constitution? How did Congress, under this
state of facts, get the right to inquire whether those representatives in
that case really expressed the will of the people. Still more; how did
Congress get the right to decide that those representatives must submit
their action to a popular vote in a manner not prescribed by the people of
the Territory, however eminently it may have been advisable, convenient,
and proper in the judgment of the Congress of the United States? What
revisory function had we, if they, through their representatives, had full
power to act on all such subjects whatsoever?
I have necessarily, in answering the Senator, gone somewhat into the
_argumentum ad hominem_. Though it is not entirely exhausted, I think
enough has been said to show the Senate in what the difference between us
consists. If it be necessary further to illustrate it, I might ask how did
he propose to annul the organic act for Utah, if the recognition by the
Congress of a sufficient number of inhabitants to justify the organization
of a territorial government transferred the sovereignty to the
inhabitants of the Territory? If sovereignty passed by the recognition of
the fact, how did he propose, by congressional act, to annul the
territorial existence of Utah?
It is this confusion of ideas, it is this confounding of terms, this
changing of language, this applying of new meanings to words, out of
which, I think, a large portion of the dispute arises. For instance, it is
claimed that President Pierce, in using the phrase "existing and incipient
States," meant to include all Territories, and thus that he had bound me
to a doctrine which precluded my strictures on what I termed squatter
sovereignty. This all arises from the misuse of language. An incipient
State, according to my idea, is the territorial condition at the moment it
changes into that of a State. It is when the people assemble in convention
to form a constitution as a State, that they are in the condition of an
incipient State. Various names were applied to the Territories at an
earlier period. Sometimes they were called "new States," because they were
expected to be States; sometimes they were called "States in embryo," and
it requires a determination of the language that is employed before it is
possible to arrive at any conclusion as to the differences of
understanding between gentlemen. Therefore, it was, and, I think, very
properly, (but not, as the Senator supposed, to catechise him,) that I
asked him what he meant by non-intervention, before I commenced these
remarks.
In the same line of errors was the confusion which resulted in his
assuming that the evils I described as growing out of his doctrine on the
plains of Kansas, were a denunciation, on my part, of the bill called the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the time that bill passed, I did not foresee all
the evils which have resulted from the doctrine based upon it, but which I
do not think the bill sustains. I am not willing now to turn on those who
were in a position which compelled them to act, made them responsible, and
to divest myself of any responsibility which belongs to any opinion I
entertained. I will not seek to judge after the fact and hold the measure
up against those who had to judge before. Therefore I will frankly avow
that I should have sustained that bill if I had been in the Senate; but I
did not foresee or apprehend such evils as immediately grew up on the
plains of Kansas. I looked then, as our fathers had looked before, to the
settlement of the question of what institutions should exist there, as one
to be determined by soil and climate, and by the pleasure of those who
should voluntarily go into the country. Such, however, was not the case.
The form of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill invited to a controversy--not
foreseen. I was not charging the Senator with any responsibility for it,
but the variation of its terms invited contending parties to meet on the
plains of Kansas, and had well-nigh eventuated in civil war. The great
respect which even the most lawless of those adventurers in Kansas had for
the name and the laws of the United States, served, by the timely
interposition of the Federal force and laws, to restrain the excited
masses and prevented violence from assuming larger proportions than
combats between squads of adventurers.
This brings me in the line of rejoinder, to the meaning of the phrase,
"the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for
themselves," etc., the language quoted against the President in the
remarks of the Senator. This, it was announced, was squatter sovereignty
in its broadest sense; and it was added, that the present Executive was
elected to the high office he holds on that construction of the platform.
Now, I do not know how it is that the Senator has the power to decide why
the people voted for a candidate. I rather suppose, among the many
millions who did vote, there must have been a variety of reasons, and that
it is not in the power of any one man to declare what determined the
result. But waiving that, is it squatter sovereignty in its broadest
sense? Is it a declaration that the inhabitants of a Territory can
exercise all the powers of a State? It says that, "like the people of a
State," they may decide for themselves. Then how do the people of a State
decide the question of what shall be property within the State? Every one
knows that it is by calling a convention, and that the people, represented
in convention, and forming a constitution their fundamental law, do this.
Every one knows that, under the constitutions and bills of rights which
prevail in the republican States of this Union, no legislature is invested
with that power. If this be the mode which is prescribed in the
States--the modes which the States must pursue--I ask you, in the name of
common sense, can the language of the President be construed to mean that
a territorial legislature may do what it is admitted the legislature of a
State can not; or that the inhabitants of a Territory can assemble a
convention, and form a fundamental law overriding the organic act, to
which the Senator has already acknowledged they stand subject until they
be admitted as a State?
We of the South, I know, are arraigned, and many believe justly, for
starting a new question which distracts the Democratic party. I have
endeavored, therefore, to show that it is not new. I have also asserted,
what I think is clear, that if it were new, but yet a constitutional
right, it is not only our province, but our duty to assert it--to assert
it whenever or wherever that right is controverted. It is asserted now
with more force than at a former period, for the simple reason that it is
now denied, to an extent which has never been known before. We do not
seek, in the cant language of the day, to force slavery on an unwilling
people. We know full well there is no power to do it; and our limited
observation has not yet made us acquainted with the man who was likely to
have a slave forced upon him, or who could get one without paying a very
high price for him. He must first have the will, and, secondly, he must
put money in his purse to enable him to get one. They are too valuable
among those by whom they are now owned, to be forced upon any body. Not
admitting the correctness of the doctrine which the Senator promulgated
in his magazine article in relation to a local character of slave
property, I recognise the laws of nature, and that immigration will follow
in the lines where any species of labor may be most profitably employed;
all, therefore, we have asked--fulfillment of the original compact of our
fathers--was that there should be no discrimination; that all property
should be equally protected; that we should be permitted to go into every
portion of the United States save where some sovereign power has said
slaves shall not be held, and to take with us our slave property in like
manner as we would take any other; no more than that. For that, our
Government has contended on the high seas against foreign powers. That has
entered into our negotiations, and has been recognized by every government
against whom a claim has been asserted. Where our property was captured on
the land during the period of an invasion, Great Britain, by treaty,
restored it, or paid for it. Wherever it has suffered loss on the high
seas, down to a very recent period, we have received indemnity; and where
we have not, it was only because the power and duty of the Federal
Government was sacrificed to this miserable strife in relation to
property, with the existence of which, those making the interference had
no municipal connection, or moral responsibility.
I do not admit that sovereignty necessarily exists in the Federal
Government or in a territorial government. I deny the Senator's
proposition, which is broadly laid down, of the necessity which must exist
for it in the one place or the other. I hold that sovereignty exists only
in a State, or in the United States in their associated capacity, to whom
sovereignty may be transferred, but that their agent is incapable of
receiving it, and, still more, of transferring it to territorial
inhabitants.
I was sorry for some of the remarks which he thought it necessary to make,
as to the position of the South on this question, and for his assertion
that the resolutions of the convention of 1848 put the pro-slavery men
and the Abolitionists on the same ground. I think it was altogether
unjust. I did not think it quite belonged to him to make it. I was aware
that his opponent, in that canvass to which I referred, had made a
prophecy that he was, sooner or later, to land in the ranks of the
Republicans. Even if I had believed it, I would not have chosen--and it is
due to candor to say I do not believe----....
MR. DAVIS. Well, it is unimportant. I feel myself constrained, because I
promised to do it, to refer to some portion of the joint record of the
Senator and myself in 1850, or, as I have consumed so much time, I would
avoid it. In that same magazine article, to which I have referred, the
Senator took occasion to refer to some part which I had taken in the
legislation of 1850; and I must say he presented me unfairly. He put me in
the attitude of one who was seeking to discriminate, and left himself in
the position of one who was willing to give equal protection to all kinds
of property. In that magazine article the Senator represents Mr. Davis, of
Mississippi, as having endeavored to discriminate in favor of slave
property, and Mr. Chase, of Ohio, as having made a like attempt against
it; and he leaves himself, by his argument, in the attitude of one who
concurred with Mr. Clay in opposition to both propositions.
I offered an amendment to the compromise bill of 1850, which was to strike
out the words "in respect to," and insert "and introduce or exclude," and
after the word "slavery" to insert the following:
"_Provided_, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to
prevent said territorial legislature passing such laws as may be
necessary for the protection of the rights of property of any kind
which may have been or may be hereafter, conformably to the
Constitution and laws of the United States, held in, or introduced
into, said Territory."
Mr. Chase's amendment is in these words:
"_Provided further_, That nothing herein contained shall be construed
as authorizing or permitting the introduction of slavery, or the
holding of persons as property within said Territory."
Whilst the quotation in the magazine article left me in the position
already stated, the debates which had occurred between us necessarily
informed the Senator that it was not my position, for I brought him in
that debate to acknowledge it.
On that occasion, I argued for my amendment as an obligation of the
Government to remove obstructions; to give the fair operation to
constitutional right; and so far from the Senator having stood with Mr.
Clay against all these propositions, the fact appears, on page 1134 of the
_Globe_, that, upon the vote on Chase's amendment, Douglas voted for it,
and Davis and Clay voted against it; that upon the vote on Davis'
amendment, Clay and Davis voted for it, and Douglas voted against it.
MR. DOUGLAS. The Senator should add, that that vote was given under the
very instructions to which he referred the other day, and which are well
known to the Senate, and are on the table.
MR. DAVIS. I was aware that the Senator had voted for Mr. Seward's
amendment, the "Wilmot proviso," under these instructions, but I receive
his explanation. Mr. Berrien offered an amendment to change the provision,
which said there should be no legislation in respect to slavery, so as to
make it read, "there shall be no legislation establishing or prohibiting
African slavery." Mr. Clay voted for that; so did Mr. Davis. Mr. Douglas
voted against it. Mr. Hale offered an amendment to Mr. Berrien's
amendment, to add the word "allowing." Here Mr. Douglas voted for Mr.
Hale's amendment, and against Davis and Clay. Then a proposition was made
to continue the Mexican laws against slavery until repealed by Congress. I
think I proved--at least I did to my own satisfaction--that there was no
such Mexican law; that it was a decree, and that the legislation which
occurred under it had never been executed. But that proposition by Mr.
Baldwin, which was to continue the Mexican laws in force, was brought to
a vote, and again Mr. Douglas voted for it, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay
voted against it. When another proposition was brought forward to amend by
"removing the obstructions of Mexican laws and usages to any right of
person or property by the citizens of the United States in the Territories
aforesaid," I do not find the Senator's name among those who voted,
though, by reference to the Appendix, I learned he was present immediately
afterwards, by his speaking to another amendment.
Thus we find the Senator differing from me on this question, as was
stated; but we do not find him concurring with Mr. Clay, as was stated;
and we do not find the proposition which I introduced, and which was
mentioned in the magazine article, receiving the joint opposition of
himself and Mr. Clay; and yet his remarks in the Senate the other day went
upon the same theory, that Mr. Clay and himself had been coöperating. Now,
the fact of the case is, that they agreed in supporting the final passage
of the bill, and I was against it. I was one of the few Southern men who
resisted, in all its stages, what was called the compromise, or omnibus
bill. I have consumed the time of the Senate by this reference, made as
brief as I could, on account of the remarks the Senator had made.
Coupled with this arraignment of myself, at a time when he says he had
leisure to discuss the question with the Attorney-General, but when there
was nothing in my position certainly to provoke the revision of my course
in Congress, is his like review of it in the Senate. As I understood his
remarks, for I did not find them in the _Congressional Globe_ the next
morning, he vaunted his own consistency and admitted mine, but claimed his
to be inside and mine outside of the Democratic organization. Is it so?
Will our votes on test questions sustain it? The list of yeas and nays
would, on the points referred to, exhibit quite the reverse. And it
strikes me that, on the recent demonstrations we have had, when the
Democratic administration was, as it were, put on its trial in relation
to its policy in Kansas, the Senator's associations, rather than mine,
were outside of the Democratic organization. How is it, on the pending
question--the declaration of great principles of political creed--the
Senator's position is outside of the Senate's Democracy, and mine in it,
so that I do not see with what justice he attempts that discrimination
between him and me? That the difference exists, that it involves a
division greater or less in Democratic ranks, is a personal regret, and I
think a public misfortune. It gives me, therefore, no pleasure to dwell
upon it, and it is now dismissed.
Mr. President, after having for forty years been engaged in bitter
controversy over a question relating to common property of the States, we
have reached the point where the issue is presented in a form in which it
becomes us to meet it according to existing facts; where it has ceased to
be a question to be decided on the footing of authority, and by reference
to history. We have decided that too long had this question been
disturbing the peace and endangering the Union, and it was resolved to
provide for its settlement by treating it as a judicial question. Now,
will it be said, after Congress provided for the adjustment of this
question by the courts, and after the courts had a case brought before
them, and expressed an opinion covering the controversy, that no
additional latitude is to be given to the application of the decision of
the court, though Congress had referred it specially to them; that it is
to be treated simply and technically as a question of _meum et tuum_, such
as might have arisen if there had been no such legislation by Congress?
Surely it does not become those who have pointed us to that provision as
the peace-offering, as the means for final adjustment, now to say that it
meant nothing more than that the courts would go on hereafter, as
heretofore, to try questions of property.
The courts have decided the question so far as they could decide any
political question. A case arose in relation to property in a slave held
within a Territory where a law of Congress declared that such property
should not be held. The whole case was before them; every thing, except
the mere technical point that the law was not enacted by a territorial
legislature. Why, then, if we are to abide by the decision of the Supreme
Court in any future case, do they maintain this controversy on the mere
technical point which now divides, disturbs, distracts, destroys the
efficiency and the power of the Democratic party? To the Senator, I know,
as a question of property, it is a matter of no consequence. I should do
him injustice if I left any one to infer that I treated his argument as
one made by a man prejudiced against the character of property involved in
the question. That is not his position; but I assert that he is pursuing
an _ignis fatuus_--not a light caught from the Constitution--but a vapor
which has arisen from the corrupting cess-pools of sectional strife, of
faction, and individual rivalry. Measured by any standard of common sense,
its magnitude would be too small to disturb the adjustment of the balance
of our country. There can be no appeal to humanity made upon this basis.
Least of all could it be made to one who, like the Senator and myself, has
seen this species of property in its sparse condition on the north-western
frontier, and seen it go out without disturbing the tranquillity of the
community, as it had previously existed without injury to any one, if not
to the benefit of the individual who held it. He has no apprehension, he
can have none, that it is to retard the political prosperity of the future
States--now the Territories. He can have no apprehension that in that
country, to which they never would be carried except for domestic
purposes, they could ever so accumulate as to constitute a great political
element. He knows, and every man who has had experience and judgment must
admit, that the few who may be so carried there have nothing to fear but
the climate, and that living in that close connection which belongs to one
or half a dozen of them in a family, the kindest relations which it is
possible to exist between master and dependent, exist between these
domestics and their owners.
There is a relation belonging to this species of property, unlike that of
the apprentice or the hired man, which awakens whatever there is of
kindness or of nobility of soul in the heart of him who owns it; this can
only be alienated, obscured, or destroyed by collecting this species of
property into such masses that the owner is not personally acquainted with
the individuals who compose it. In the relation, however, which can exist
in the north-western Territories, the mere domestic connection of one,
two, or, at most, half a dozen servants in a family, associating with the
children as they grow up, attending upon age as it declines, there can be
nothing against which either philanthropy or humanity can make an appeal.
Not even the emancipationist could raise his voice, for this is the high
road and the open gate to the condition in which the masters would, from
interest, in a few years, desire the emancipation of every one who may
thus be taken to the north-western frontier.
Mr. President, I briefly and reluctantly referred, because the subject had
been introduced, to the attitude of Mississippi on a former occasion. I
will now as briefly say, that in 1851, and in 1860, Mississippi was, and
is, ready to make every concession which it becomes her to make to the
welfare and the safety of the Union. If, on a former occasion, she hoped
too much from fraternity, the responsibility for her disappointment rests
upon those who fail to fulfill her expectations. She still clings to the
Government as our fathers formed it. She is ready to-day and to-morrow, as
in her past, and though brief, yet brilliant history, to maintain that
Government in all its power, and to vindicate its honor with all the means
she possesses. I say brilliant history; for it was in the very morning of
her existence that her sons, on the plains of New Orleans, were announced,
in general orders to have been the admiration of one army and the wonder
of the other. That we had a division in relation to the measures enacted
in 1850, is true; that the Southern rights men became the minority in the
election which resulted, is true; but no figure of speech could warrant
the Senator in speaking of them as subdued; as coming to him or any body
else for quarter. I deemed it offensive when it was uttered, and the scorn
with which I repelled it at the instant, time has only softened to
contempt. Our flag was never borne from the field. We had carried it in
the face of defeat, with a knowledge that defeat awaited it; but scarcely
had the smoke of the battle passed away which proclaimed another victor,
before the general voice admitted that the field again was ours; I have
not seen a sagacious, reflecting man, who was cognizant of the events as
they transpired at the time, who does not say that, within two weeks after
the election, our party was in a majority; and the next election which
occurred showed that we possessed the State beyond controversy. How we
have wielded that power it is not for me to say. I trust others may see
forbearance in our conduct--that, with a determination to insist upon our
constitutional rights, then and now, there is an unwavering desire to
maintain the Government, and to uphold the Democratic party.
We believe now, as we have asserted on former occasions, that the best
hope for the perpetuity of our institutions depends upon the coöperation,
the harmony, the zealous action of the Democratic party. We cling to that
party from conviction, that its principles and its aims are those of truth
and the country, as we cling to the Union for the fulfillment of the
purposes for which it was formed. Whenever we shall be taught that the
Democratic party is recreant to its principles; whenever we shall learn
that it can not be relied upon to maintain the great measures which
constitute its vitality, I, for one, shall be ready to leave it. And so,
when we declare our tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of
the Constitution. If the compact between the States is to be trampled into
the dust; if anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation and
consolidation which threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the
Union is to become powerless for the purposes for which it was
established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for protection, then, sir,
conscious of the rectitude of our course, the justice of our cause,
self-reliant, yet humbly, confidingly trusting in the arm that guided and
protected our fathers, we look beyond the confines of the Union for the
maintenance of our rights. A habitual reverence and cherished affection
for the Government will bind us to it longer than our interests would
suggest or require; but he is a poor student of the world's history who
does not understand that communities at last must yield to the dictates of
their interests. That the affection, the mutual desire for the mutual
good, which existed among our fathers, may be weakened in succeeding
generations by the denial of right, and hostile demonstration, until the
equality guaranteed, but not secured within the Union, may be sought for
without it, must be evident to even a careless observer of our race. It is
time to be up and doing. There is yet time to remove the causes of
dissension and alienation which are now distracting, and have for years
past divided the country.
If the Senator correctly described me as having, at a former period,
against my own preferences and opinions, acquiesced in the decision of my
party; if when I had youth, when physical vigor gave promise of many days,
and the future was painted in the colors of hope, I could thus surrender
my own convictions, my own prejudices, and coöperate with my political
friends, according to their views, as to the best method of promoting the
public good; now, when the years of my future can not be many, and
experience has sobered the hopeful tints of youth's gilding; when,
approaching the evening of life, the shadows are reversed, and the mind
turns retrospectively, it is not to be supposed that I would abandon
lightly, or idly put on trial, the party to which I have steadily adhered.
It is rather to be assumed that conservatism, which belongs to the
timidity or caution of increasing years, would lead me to cling to--to be
supported by, rather than to cast off, the organization with which I have
been so long connected. If I am driven to consider the necessity of
separating myself from those old and dear relations, of discarding the
accustomed support, under circumstances such as I have described, might
not my friends who differ from me pause and inquire whether there is not
something involved in it which calls for their careful revision?
I desire no divided flag for the Democratic party, seek not to depreciate
the power of the Senator, or take from him any thing of that confidence he
feels in the large army which follows his standard. I prefer that his
banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; but if it
unrestrainedly rustles, impatient to be unfurled, we who have not invited
the conflict, shrink not from the trial; we will plant our flag on every
hill and plain; it shall overlook the Atlantic and welcome the sun as he
rises from its dancing waters; it shall wave its adieu as he sinks to
repose in the quiet Pacific.
Our principles are national; they belong to every State of the Union; and
though elections may be lost by their assertion, they constitute the only
foundation on which we can maintain power, on which we can again rise to
the dignity the Democracy once possessed. Does not the Senator from
Illinois see in the sectional character of the vote he received, that his
opinions are not acceptable to every portion of the country? Is not the
fact that the resolutions adopted by seventeen States, on which the
greatest reliance must be placed for Democratic support, are in opposition
to the dogma to which he still clings, a warning that if he persists and
succeeds in forcing his theory upon the Democratic party, its days are
numbered? We ask only for the Constitution. We ask of the Democracy only
from time to time to declare, as current exigencies may indicate, what the
Constitution was intended to secure and provide. Our flag bears no new
device. Upon its folds our principles are written in living light; all
proclaiming the constitutional Union, justice, equality, and fraternity of
our ocean-bound domain, for a limitless future.